“Yes… you’re stupid. Worthless.”

  Young Kellen could only stare at his father with blank, emptied eyes, the sharp stench of liquor rolling off the man along with every spit of rage.

  “You’ve shamed House Rowlack—no. You’re the stain on the name of William Rowlack.”

  The older man—white-haired, towering—swung his arm across Kellen’s desk.

  Everything went flying.

  Glassware shattered. Thick spellbooks slid and slammed to the floor. Scrolls and notes scattered like trash.

  “Nonsense,” his father snarled. “All of it. Garbage.”

  He stomped on the heap of books without hesitation—then grabbed the script Kellen had written through the night, tore it into strips, and let the pieces flutter down in front of him.

  “The story you wrote is pathetic. “With trash like this for language, you’ll never inherit the title of Royal Poet of Arcadia.”

  His gaze dropped to a magic tome trapped beneath his boot. He kicked it—hard—sending it skidding into the wall.

  “Magic? You still think someone like you can become a mage?” His voice rose, thick with contempt. “No talent. No bloodline of any great archmage. An idiot like you will never stand among the gods, Kellen.”

  He ended on a growl, lifting the bottle to his mouth and drinking like he was trying to drown the room itself.

  “If you keep indulging this delusion… I will be the last poet this family ever produces.”

  The door slammed.

  The sound rang—high and lingering—inside Kellen’s skull long after his father was gone.

  Kellen didn’t move.

  His hand trembled as he reached up and adjusted his monocle, as though the small circle of glass were the last thing keeping him anchored.

  His eyes drifted over the wreckage.

  Again.

  The same scene—repeated so often it had become humiliatingly ordinary.

  He bit down on his lip until he tasted blood, swallowing back the sob that sat in his throat. Then, slowly, carefully, he knelt and gathered the torn pages and scattered books into his arms—as if they were fragile, as if they mattered.

  He sat amid poems and books strewn across the marble floor of the family library, grand and silent.

  Behind him, the tall window stood open to the night.

  Two moons hung side by side in the sky, their pale silver light washing over his back—over his shoulders, trembling despite his efforts to stay still.

  A clear drop hit the paper.

  Then a second. A third. The ink began to bleed, blooming into soft, ugly halos that swallowed his work.

  “No… no…”

  The whisper barely left him.

  Then he stopped.

  His shaking hand rested on the wet pulp of the torn script, and he simply watched—powerless—as the story he had built with his own hands faded into nothing.

  …

  …

  Kellen stepped backward—two slow paces.

  Something in him settled.

  So abruptly it felt like the boy who’d been unraveling moments ago no longer existed.

  He lifted his fingers and traced the air above the nearest crystal.

  The image inside split—branching into multiple strands—each one showing him dying again and again, in variations that differed but not in outcome.

  Rein watched, jaw tight, then looked back at the boy in the monocle.

  This time, Kellen wasn’t frantic.

  His face was calm.

  His eyes—behind the pale lens—looked hollow. Cold.

  “You were right about one thing, Rein,” Kellen said. “If I go by what the book’s leftover records imply… I’ve probably ‘ended’ here around twenty times already.”

  He paused, his mouth twitching into a shape that wasn’t quite a smile—more like a scar opening up.

  “Of course I know those events happened. But who cares about little things like that? What immortal bothers counting how many times they’ve died?

  He met Rein’s gaze head-on, like he was trying to look through bone and into the soul behind it.

  “Yes… normally, dying and returning wipes the memories of that run. But I’m different.”

  His voice softened—not kinder, just quieter.

  “Sometimes the Ekhosar is… generous enough to give those fractured memories back to me. And it helps. Occasionally.”

  He looked down at one of the crystal images: himself with a hole in his chest, dragging his own blood into a hurried arrow on the floor before something off-screen tore him away.

  “Ah,” Kellen murmured. “I remember this one. Pitiful, isn’t it?”

  A small laugh slipped out of him.

  “That time you refused to go down into the basement. I had to invest a bit—leave hints, guide the path myself. “And that lycan…” His smile twitched. “Once it gets out of its cage, it’s hard to control.”

  “I just was standing in the wrong place, at the wrong time.”

  Rein’s eyes narrowed. The blue in them flickered—just once—at the weight of what that meant.

  “You know,” Rein said quietly, “that I’ve seen that scene.”

  Kellen leaned forward, and the book’s dark light caught in his eye, turning it into something almost inhuman.

  “You think you’re the only one who gets visions?” he asked. “The only one who suffers hallucinations?”

  His tone sharpened.

  “Everyone who’s touched the Ekhosar’s power—me, and the others in the club—has been haunted by shadows of the past.”

  Kellen’s grin widened, and the pleasure in it was unmistakable: the pleasure of having the better hand.

  “So why that face, Rein?” he said softly. “Did you really believe this was your first time stepping into this dungeon?”

  Rein clenched his teeth, staring at Kellen’s smile.

  Bastard.

  LIZ—can you verify the possibility of a loop? Is he telling the truth, or is he trying to throw me off?

  [LIZ: If you’re truly trapped in a loop, my system wouldn’t be much more than an erasable memory. Data would be wiped and overwritten every time the loop restarts. You’re asking for travel logs on paper that’s been erased and rewritten dozens of times.]

  [LIZ: You’d only see faint indentations—layers of overlapping strokes. Too tangled to separate past from present.]

  Rein’s lips barely moved.

  Right… without an external reference point, I’m just an observer trapped inside a closed system.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  His eyes darted, thinking faster than he could breathe.

  “Reference… flaw… wait.”

  He blinked once.

  LIZ—what if the overwrite isn’t using the same pen?

  [LIZ: Explain.]

  If my original matter came from Arath—then got ‘saved’ and ‘rewritten’ by the Ekhosar…” Rein whispered, “……the energy used to put me back together wouldn’t be identical. Not at a fundamental level.

  His gaze sharpened.

  This place’s mana signature is warped. Drier. Meaner than Arath’s. That means there should be noise. Residue. An imperfect overwrite—on me.

  [LIZ: Understood. You’re looking for residual mana from an incomplete reset.]

  “Exactly,” Rein breathed.

  “Scan my core mana circles and matter composition. If I’ve been reset before, there has to be discontinuity—an inconsistency in energy density.

  He drew in a slow breath, his eyes flicking to the time.

  Do it. We have eleven minutes left to solve this garbage.

  Kellen watched Rein with a calmness that felt unnatural—almost practiced.

  Then he opened his arms, gesturing around the temple hall like a man showing off a masterpiece.

  “All right,” he said. “Since you’ve been selected as the ‘protagonist’ in my work, I’ll give you a gift.”

  His smile held.

  “A secret.”

  “And it’s a shame, really—because once the next loop begins, you’ll forget it completely.”

  He began to stroll around the control altar, unhurried.

  “This is Ht’ara. A world the gods abandoned—left to wither until it nearly died.”

  He looked almost reverent when he said the name.

  “And the Ekhosar is the last inheritance they left behind to save this hell. It gathers mana, builds a return circuit—loops at intervals—dragging time back so the future catastrophe can’t arrive.”

  “That’s why the mana here…” Rein cut in, voice even, “…feels different from Arath.”

  Kellen stopped and turned, and pride flashed across his face like a reflex.

  “Yes. Of course. That’s you, Rein—seeing the incompatibility from the start.”

  He lifted a finger, as if lecturing a student he liked.

  “The problem is: every time it rewinds time, the mana here becomes slightly corrupted. And eventually, I discovered something beautiful.”

  His eyes brightened.

  “Mana can’t be perfectly reversed. Not one hundred percent. Never.”

  Rein let out a short laugh—soft, sharp.

  Kellen’s pride froze.

  “No, Kellen,” Rein said, voice calm. “You didn’t discover anything new.”

  His eyes were cold.

  “The universe has hated perfection since the beginning. And it’s not just mana.”

  Rein shifted.

  The way he walked—the cadence of his words—changed completely. His voice turned cold and steady, like he’d stepped onto an academic stage to announce the failure of a research project.

  “You’re trying to build a perpetual-motion system in a world where energy must always disperse,” Rein said. “There’s a reason thermodynamics is blunt about this: once energy is lost into disorder, you can’t recover it all without paying for it somewhere.”

  “Reason…? What kind of—what kind of stupid dynamics is that?” Kellen blurted.

  He stood there, bewildered. The relaxed confidence from earlier began to twist into something uglier—confusion, irritation, the sense that Rein was speaking in a divine language he couldn’t reach.

  Rein didn’t stop to entertain the question.

  He walked away in calm, measured steps, offering Kellen nothing but his back.

  “You’re not saving this place, Kellen,” he said without turning. “You’re pushing it toward overheating. Every loop you force isn’t restoration—it’s acceleration. The more you rewind, the more you pack this dimension with waste until it hits its limit.”

  His tone sharpened, just slightly.

  “And it’s close. It’s already close to breaking.”

  [LIZ: Rein… I found something. Your mana circles shows a corruption ratio of 11.3%. It isn’t high yet, but it confirms it—definitively. You’ve been trapped in this return cycle multiple times.]

  Is there a way to fix it? Rein asked at once—inside his head, too fast to speak.

  [LIZ: If you escape the loop now, I can purge the corrupted portion and refill you with clean mana from Arath. But if you remain here, the corruption will keep rising until it reaches an irreversible critical point.]

  Irreversible, Rein repeated silently.

  He kept his back to Kellen—not out of dominance, but to hide it: the tightness in his expression, the sudden weight that had settled behind his eyes. In the dim control chamber, his concern could pass for shadow.

  [LIZ: Based on my projection… once corruption reaches 50%, your fundamental data structure will sustain permanent damage. You won’t be “Rein” anymore. You’ll become… something that only looks like you.]

  Rein’s lips barely moved. “You’re saying…”

  [LIZ: My hypothesis is this: the werewolves, the walking dead—Those are failed returns. Living systems that crossed the critical threshold—and didn’t come back intact.]

  The chat window flashed a deep, urgent red.

  [LIZ: Every loop is a degradation, Rein. You’re trying to play a record that’s been scratched twenty times; eventually, the music is just static. If you hit fifty percent, the ‘original’ Rein will be gone.]

  Rein’s brow tightened. His gaze flicked to the countdown in the lower corner.

  Nine minutes.

  The only reason he hadn’t moved to deal with Kellen—or destroy the black book outright—was because he understood the risk. If the inter-dimensional bridge collapsed the wrong way, the warped dungeon might implode and seal them inside a dying world forever.

  And perhaps… the only key to leaving correctly was buried in Kellen’s fractured mind.

  “You’re just trying to scare me with a story,” Kellen laughed.

  Behind the monocle lens, his eyes glittered with manic excitement. “But I’ll admit it—I like your elegant terms. ‘Perpetual motion,’ huh?”

  He shook his head, amused. “No. Let’s call it what it really is.” He spread his hands.

  “The Eternal Theatre. A perfect world the gods abandoned for us to complete.”

  Then he turned toward Rein with a bright, pleading hope that didn’t belong in a room like this.

  “Why won’t someone as smart as you work with me? Your intellect. My imagination. Together—we take the secrets of the universe. We can take the power to command everything… like gods.”

  He stepped closer. His voice softened, but it trembled.

  “You saw it yourself. No one truly dies here. They just finish their part in the masterpiece I wrote. When they leave the stage, everything returns to how it was.”

  His smile grew, reverent.

  “But you, Rein… you’re the lead.”

  Kellen stopped and clenched his fist, as if he could hold the whole world inside his palm.

  “You’re the hero in the most perfect play this world has ever seen. I’ll make you the greatest figure in Arath—someone they’ll kneel for, worship, revere.”

  His teeth were clean. His eyes were not.

  “Accept the role… and the world will revolve around you alone.”

  He inhaled once—then delivered the final line with the weight of a coronation decree.

  “You are… the Archmage King, Rein.”

  Rein’s shoulders trembled for a moment.

  Then he turned.

  The harshness in his eyes drained into something unreadable—still, flat, impossible to predict. When he spoke, his voice was carefully leveled.

  “An Archmage King… wow. That’s a better offer than I expected, Kellen.”

  He paused, narrowing his eyes.

  “But how am I supposed to say yes when we both know this could all reset again?”

  His gaze didn’t blink.

  “Or if your luck is worse than you think… the ‘me’ in the next loop might not be me at all.”

  Kellen’s face brightened instantly, like a child praised at the exact moment he’d been waiting for.

  “No, Rein—do you think I’ve been dying in here without learning anything?” he said, stepping toward the control altar with renewed confidence.“In the latest run, I cracked over thirty percent of the Ekhosar’s control layer.”

  His voice quickened—excited, proud.

  “The book clearly describes how to forge a ‘key’ to break the return circuit. There just needs to be… a small sacrifice.”

  At that moment, the black leatherbound book began to groan—loud, wrong.

  It trembled hard enough to warp the air in visible ripples.

  “What—?” Kellen frowned, alarm flickering across his face as he started toward it.

  “A sacrifice?” Rein cut in sharply, stepping out of the dimness and forcing Kellen to turn back.

  “It’s simple,” Kellen said fast, as if explaining something trivial. “We eliminate the anchor points. I just have to erase every club member’s return marker—wipe the contaminated data and reset the Ekhosar to its initial state.”

  He kept glancing at the screaming book, trying to diagnose it even while he spoke.

  “From what I’ve read, once it returns to that phase, it will reconnect to Arath on its own and search for a new power source. Then we just walk through the door it creates and go home—cleanly.”

  “That means…” Rein’s voice dropped, colder. “That means,” Rein said quietly, “everyone trapped in here—everyone you call your friends—dies for real.”

  Kellen barely looked at him.

  “Those?” he said, indifferent. “They’re just supporting cast.”

  His attention remained fixed on the book’s growing distress.

  “As long as I’m the writer… and you’re the lead… that’s all that matters, isn’t it?”

  “And how is your new plan any different from your earlier failures?” Rein asked, disgust no longer hidden.

  Kellen lifted his head. His eyes shone with devotion—devotion to his own delusion.

  “Different? It’s everything. Those loops were just experiments.”

  He smiled, fever-bright.

  “You saw my spatial expansion in the cabin, didn’t you? I only did what the book instructed—expand the boundary, again and again…”

  His voice rose, sweeping outward.

  “Soon the entire Academy falls under the Ekhosar’s domain.”

  He stepped back and spread his arms wide, embracing a dream big enough to be monstrous.

  “No… not just the Academy. If I keep adding circuits, I’ll turn all of Arath into a stage.”

  His grin stretched.

  “My epic will become reality—endless, unbreakable.”

  And then, softer—almost tender:

  “And don’t worry, Rein. I haven’t forgotten my promise.”

  His eyes locked on Rein like a vow.

  “In that new world… you’ll play the greatest hero of them all.”

  Okay, LIZ… do we have enough? Rein asked silently, his sharp gaze locked on the narrow gap between Kellen and the black book—now trembling harder by the second.

  [LIZ: Success probability: 64.8%. And given your personality… I’m guessing you won’t wait until it climbs to eighty.]

  Rein flicked his eyes to the countdown in the corner of his vision.

  Less than seven minutes.

  If he kept waiting for Kellen to spill everything, the dimension would collapse first. And if he didn’t gamble now—there wouldn’t be another chance to gamble at all.

  Rein didn’t wait for the probability to climb. He lunged—his body becoming a streak of distorted air as the Haste kicked in.

  He vanished from where he stood—then snapped into existence right in front of Kellen like a warped afterimage.

  He’d cast it in silence while his back was turned.

  His hand shot out, fingers spread, reaching—almost close enough to graze the book’s surface—

  —when an icy iron chain erupted from empty air.

  It coiled around his arm with the bite of a steel vise.

  A massive form surfaced beside Kellen out of the darkness, as if it had been standing there all along—hidden under the shadow, waiting.

  Chain Reaper.

  With a single yank, it ripped Rein off his feet, lifted him like he weighed nothing, and hurled him across the chamber.

  He hit the stone wall with a deafening crack. Dust and grit burst outward from the impact.

  “Ah… Rein,” Kellen murmured, calm—almost bored.

  He didn’t even turn to look.

  Both his hands were still busy, adjusting the mana flow—trying to stabilize the book as its shriek climbed higher and higher.

  “You always were the impatient type, Rein. Always trying to skip to the final act before the stage is even set.”

  His voice stayed level.

  Then, quieter—cooler:

  “I’m disappointed. So in the end… you’re no different from the others. Always reaching to destroy what I create.”

  He finally turned his head—not toward Rein, but toward the chained demon that had just smashed him into the wall.

  His monocle caught the book’s sickly glow.

  “Then… close his curtain.”

  A slight pause.

  The name didn’t just fall—it commanded.

  “William.”

  These entries expand the lore and mechanics introduced in this chapter.

  Completely optional—read only if you enjoy diving deeper into the system.

  A term used by Kellen to describe the recursive world governed by the Ekhosar—a magical, looping domain where reality resets after each “run.” Kellen sees it as a stage where characters fulfill roles in an epic he controls. The name emphasizes his delusional belief that he is the “playwright” of a perfect, repeatable reality.

  A side-effect of being repeatedly “reset” in a flawed time loop by the Ekhosar. Over time, the purity of an individual’s mana deteriorates due to imperfect overwriting. If the corruption ratio exceeds 50%, the individual risks irreversible damage—losing their original personality and becoming something else entirely, like the werewolves or undead in the dungeon.

  Kellen has developed awareness of previous runs, sometimes recalling events that should’ve been erased. This awareness is rare and typically blocked in other characters. It gives him a strategic advantage, enabling him to manipulate events through “pre-written” scripts and experience-based adjustments.

  Rein theorizes that if the Ekhosar rewrites him using energy from a different world (not Arath), the mismatch in mana signature would leave detectable noise or discontinuities in his structure. This is used as proof of being stuck in a loop and shows the system is flawed.

  Unique identifiers left in each “club member” (likely the Enigma Society) that allow them to return when the world resets. Kellen plans to erase these to break the cycle, sacrificing everyone else in the process.

  Kellen explicitly divides people into narrative roles—himself as writer/director, Rein as protagonist, others as expendable “supporting cast.” This speaks to his psychological descent into god-complex territory.

  Defined by LIZ:

  Once mana corruption reaches 50%, personality and structure break down permanently, replacing the person with a warped, irrecoverable entity (e.g., lycans, undead). Rein is warned not to let his corruption rise any further.

  Kellen believes he’s discovered a way to forge a magical “key” to break the loop using the Ekhosar’s control layer. However, it requires a “sacrifice”—erasing others. Whether this key works or is another of his delusions remains unclear.

  Artifacts and Relics

  Ekhosar Def’vor (Update)

  A god-forged construct designed to gather mana and rewind time to prevent future catastrophes. However, each cycle makes the world more unstable due to mana degradation. Kellen sees it as divine inheritance; Rein sees it as a decaying system bound to collapse.

  Rein uses Thermodynamics and entropy to refute Kellen’s theory:

  “You’re trying to build a perpetual-motion system in a world where energy must always disperse.”

  This scientific metaphor explains why the system cannot sustain itself forever, aligning with the Second Law of Thermodynamics.

  Every reset consumes and corrupts more mana, like trying to replay a damaged record. This comparison emphasizes that magical systems are still bound by physical laws—energy is never fully recoverable, and loss accumulates.

  A summoned entity under Kellen’s control, presumably conjured through the Ekhosar’s power. Responds to direct commands and restrains Rein in the climax of the chapter.